Owego village board to consider Inflection Energy offer at special session

Dec. 9, 2010

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VILLAGE OF OWEGO -- An offer from a natural gas company to purchase treated wastewater from the Village of Owego will go back before the village board a week earlier than expected.

Mayor Edward Arrington called a special session of the village's legislative body for Monday so the trustees can consider Inflection Energy's offer, which would pay 5 cents per gallon for up to 200,000 gallons of water each day from the village's wastewater treatment plant. The deal has the potential to double the village's annual revenues.

The trustees unanimously voted to table the offer earlier this week and revisit it at their regularly scheduled Dec. 20 session. While there is no firm deadline on the offer, Arrington said the village needs to act sooner rather than later.

"I've had citizens come up to me on the street and say, 'Are you guys crazy?'" Arrington said. "So I just want to get this done. I think it will be a travesty if the village board lets this go by, and I'm asking them to come together and make a decision."

Monday's special session will not have a public comment period, Arrington said. Some members of the public voiced concern earlier this week about potential truck traffic that could come to the area as a result of the deal, leading the trustees to hold off on a vote.

Inflection is one of many companies that hope to use high-volume hydraulic fracturing -- a gas extraction technique that injects a mix of millions of gallons of water with chemicals and sand underground to fracture rock formations -- in New York.

"We thought we were doing the Village of Owego a favor by finding a use for their wastewater," Inflection CEO Mark Sexton said. "There are certainly other sources of water available to us that are, in fact, cheaper, but we've been telling people we can work with the community and give back and this is one example of that."

Even if the deal is approved Monday, it would be subject to a lengthy approval process from the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission before the water could be sold by the village.

The meeting will take place Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Tioga County Office Building on Main Street in Owego.